One of the first new moves made regarding their content carriage deal with the BBC, American streaming platform Hulu have announced their debut of a relatively new series from the broadcaster shortly after its first season has been completed in the UK.

The show in question is their own co-produced action-comedy series The Wrong Mans, as it was announced that today (11 November) will see all 6 episodes of the first season available on subscription version Hulu Plus subscription service. Meanwhile, it is noted that 2 episodes will be made instantly available on Hulu for free, with the remaining four episodes arriving on a weekly basis through to 9 December).

The BBC had premiered the series, which stars Mathew Baynton and James Corden, on 24 September, airing the final episode on 29 October, and it appears as though American viewers will be able to watch it along with the five that preceded it two weeks on from its home market airdate.

The Wrong Mans is described by Hulu as follows: “Meet Sam (Mathew Baynton) and Phil (James Corden), two lowly office workers who’s menial existence get turned completely upside-down when Sam witnesses a horrific car crash, and decides to answer a ringing phone at the scene of the crash. This decision leads to a case of mistaken identity that ultimately sets off a series of events that eventually leads to Sam and Phil, a fellow co-worker, becoming entangled in a deadly criminal conspiracy. Combining the high-octane suspense of an action thriller with the everyday antics of a workplace comedy, ‘The Wrong Mans’ explores what happens when two ordinary men are put into extraordinary situations.”

The Wrong Mans director & producer Jim Field Smith said of the less restrictive creative process with Hulu on-board as American broadcasters: “I think if we’d been making ‘The Wrong Mans’ for a network, we would have been encouraged to push it more firmly into a kind of classic action comedy genre, where the thrills and the jeopardy are a little more meted and it’s much more about the characters and the comedy. And what we were able to do with this show, because of the BBC and because of Hulu, was not hold back. And my kind of watchword when making the show was that I wanted the – the jeopardy and the drama to be real. And so there’s no comedy in the show that’s in the drama. The comedy is the chemistry between James and Mat, who play two lead characters. So, yeah, I think that’s something that Hulu enabled us to do, that maybe a more traditional network wouldn’t have allowed us to do.”

He added of the rarity that the series provides by being in the action-comedy genre: “Doing a plot-driven comedy is a very hard genre. Especially in, like, a half-hour space per episode. Because usually in your sort of ‘Homeland’s and your ’24’s you’ve got an hour to kind of weave your way through all the different subplots. In half an hour you just don’t have that time. So that was the real challenge for me, was trying to walk that line. But the most important thing for us was to make a show that functioned effectively as a drama-thriller, but then was also funny. And so that was kind of how we picked our way through it.”

While the production team remain in debate over whether to push forward with a second season of the format (depending on the quality of script), The Wrong Mans for now will be focused on providing a good (online) showing to its American audience, a Hulu-made trailer for which can be found below:

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[…] The latter of the two, starring creators James Corden and Matthew Baynton as council office co-workers who become entangled in a world of conspiracy, crime, and corruption when they are in the wrong place at the wrong time, is returning for a second season after a successful first 6-episode run, which aired on BBC Two and in America as an exclusive of streaming platform Hulu. […]